Sally Poole is the owner of Poole Communications, with offices in Hannibal, Marshall and Poplar Bluff, Missouri. She is very involved in Hannibal and Quincy, IL., with memberships in the Chamber of Commerce, Hannibal Arts Council, Affordable Community Education, Lions Club and Rotary. She has helped in the fund-raising campaign to build a Hannibal campus for Moberly Area Community College. Currently she is helping to start the Hannibal Chamber Business Development Committee.

This weekend I read the book Too Big To Fail by Andrew Ross Sorkin. I realized there are serious global difficulties with companies getting too large. American International Group (AIG) sells insurance products around the world. They are diverse, and tied in with so many businesses and countries that they really are too big to fail. If this one company fails or falters, it takes down many other companies and possibly countries with it. AIG's reach is that far - the company is larger than many countries. Because of the poor publicity around AIG needing an $85 million government loan to keep it afloat, it has changed its name in many places. But it is still expanding and profits have increased dramatically since the trouble they faced in 2008. So much so that the loan has been repaid with interest to the US Government. However, the tax breaks they received will never be repaid.
In the US monopolies are discouraged to allow greater competition between companies and service to consumers. I'm wondering if there needs to be a limit to how large a national or global company should be. When a company is so large they can disrupt the global economy - as AIG did - they influence the lives of too many people.
With great size comes greater global responsibility. The problem is, companies are not always responsible.